Rain
by katietheunicorn
Summary: Her body merged perfectly with his, melting into him like his companion puzzle piece, like they were a perfect fit, or some other kind of beautiful cliché.


Just a fluffly little Merder one-shot to tide me over through the last of my exams! This is set mid season three because I only started watching this a week ago and fell completely in love. The last episode I watched was 03x12; I'm really enjoying it. Merder is my OTP (of course) and they are perfect - nobody spoil me, please!

Hope you enjoy,

KT X  
(_ Green_Tiger_21_)

_Dedicated to and written especially for my Katie, katieupatree, who has been providing guidance counselling as my poor shipper heart has spiralled deep into the pits of Shonda Rhimes's personal fangirl Hell, while also keeping up with her amazing beauty, intelligence, talent and Katie-corn's-Proud-Big-Sister getup._

* * *

It had been inherently chaotic and overwhelming in the pit that day, but its wildness and horrific over-activity had somehow become exacerbated in the two minutes Meredith had just taken to go to the bathroom. She stood for a second in some amount of shock, staring open-mouthed at the carnage that had ensued in mere moments, before Bailey came along and threw a yellow gown at her, yelling strict instructions and assigning cases, ordering her to move and asking why she was still standing there. While the trauma rooms became immediately occupied and critical cases had to suffice with portable crash kits and curtained-off cubicles, Meredith ran to the doors leading out to the ambulance bay to pick up her patient and run. He, too, was critical, and no doubt a case for Derek, given to blood cascading down his face, dripping off the end of his nose and pooling in his lap; a paramedic who walked alongside his gurney was holding gauze to the wound as much as he could but it was clear there was not enough pressure to be had and Meredith feared they wouldn't be able to get a good picture from a CT in order for Derek to operate.

"Straight up!" Bailey shouted, and Meredith dragged the gurney with the paramedic towards the elevator, paging Derek as the doors slid closed and she felt the floor pull up.

Derek met them at the doorway and asked for statistics, though he knew it was bad, given the way his eyes widened at the site of the man lying there.

"Todd McCarthy," said the paramedic, "Shots fired at the docks, we don't know how hard it hit him. He's thirty-seven, no underlying medical conditions; we've requested all his other records from his family doctor."

"Thank you, let's try and get a CT," Derek said and the paramedic was swapped out for a nurse who swung the gurney into the CT room and shifted Mr McCarthy onto the stretcher with Meredith, who, thinking on her feet, taped the gauze to the patient's head as tightly as she could.

Once they had a picture, Derek thought about his options. Meredith always loved to watch him think, even in a situation as pressing as this when she knew her attention should be focused elsewhere, she loved the way he thought and the way he brought his hand to his mouth, smoothed his eyebrow and looked down so that his lashes cast shadows over his cheekbones. He brought his gaze back to the screen and squinted – that meant he was scrolling through the library of possible surgeries in his head and selecting the best option, calculating how many personnel he'd need, how much time it would take and the success rate. He leaned back in his chair, meaning he'd chosen the most plausible courses of action, before he spoke to Meredith.

"The bullet just grazed at first but ended up on the wrong side of his skull and bounced," Derek indicated the path of the bullet on the monitor. "His cerebellum is not damaged, so his movement should not be compromised. I'd like to drill a new hole above his left ear to retrieve the bullet; the rebound angle was very obtuse so the path is at the edges of the brain. There's already massive haemorrhaging, we need to go now."

In response to this monologue, all Meredith needed to say was, "OK."

They worked well as a team. Their hands never bounced as they fought for a spot and she knew now when to assist without him having to ask her; they'd cross their near legs so from under the table they appeared to be one person with four legs in fetching scrubs and bloodied rubber shoes. Right now, Meredith prepped Mr McCarthy as quickly as she could, irrigating the wound, cutting his clothes, intubating him and giving him morphine once his records came in and revealed no allergies. He remained unconscious, which she reported back to Derek, who said that was to be expected. They then scrubbed in together, and, though neither of them knew it, one of the kinder anaesthesiologists smiled whilst readying the theatre when she saw haw they simultaneously brought up their left hands and scrubbed, then switched arms at the same moment. They even leaned to opposite sides of the room to grab tissue paper with uncanny timing. He led the way into the OR and she followed.

"OK," Derek said as soon as his arms had slid into a gown and his hands found gloves, indicating for the anaesthesiologist to pump in the happy gas.

"Drill," he said, and butchery began.

* * *

After eight gruelling hours, with multiple scares, several adrenaline-fuelled bouts of ventricular fibrillation, numerous brain bleeds and a frightening moment when Mr McCarthy's eyelids flickered, Derek had at last been able to safely remove the bullet. It had been difficult with so much commotion and movement because he wanted to damage the surrounding tissue as little as possible, of course. High stress was an understatement, and Meredith, though thrilled she had scrubbed in, grateful for the small amount of independence Bailey was giving her, delighted she could work with Derek and happy she could learn from him, she was incredibly relieved to remove herself from the OR and slouch to the locker room, well aware that there was blood crusting on her eyebrow and caking her hair and she was probably leaving red footprints throughout the corridors, but even more conscious of the fact that her shift had ended at ten and it was now four in the morning.

That was all OK, though, when she shuffled out of the building and into the rain, and Derek was waiting for her. She'd washed her face and hair but had missed a small trickle of red above her collarbone, and, though Derek would never admit it, there was a pulse-racing moment when he thought she'd been hurt, if it only lasted a second.

The rain was pouring but neither seemed to mind as they walked slowly through the parking lot, his arm around her waist. He looked up at her and analysed her face through the rain, noting the small indent her nasal strips had made, noticing the freckles dusting her skin up to her temple, noticing a tiny fleck of mascara dotted at the corner of her eyelid. He saw the tired droop of her eyelids and how slow and sleep-like her breathing had become, the rise and fall of her chest becoming deep and less frequent.

"Can we... Stop a moment..." she murmured.

Derek obliged and became worried; he knew she was tired, of course, and was aware that she had worked six hours past her shift's end, but he also knew that seeing her father and her almost-family as well as trying to guide her mother through the relapse of her twenties in addition to counselling Izzie and comforting George and talking with Christina.

"Are you alright?" he whispered as the rain hammered down and they became soaked to the bone, the smudge of blood on Meredith's neck washing away as she tried to recover herself.

"Yes, yeah, I just..." Meredith faded and Derek acted in an instant.

As she began to crumple, as her knees gave out and her head fell back, he dropped his briefcase and caught her. He caught her. He cradled her close to his chest and looked down at her as she fluttered her eyelids, trying desperately to hold onto consciousness. He didn't want to disturb her, but he crouched very carefully and slowly and snagged his case with two fingers, keeping Meredith level the whole time. They continued to get wet, though there was no wetter they would possibly become, as he carried her to his SUV and set her gently in the front seat, drawing her belt across her small, sodden body and kissing her forehead lightly. He'd caught her. He could have been back in that hospital with a subdural haematoma or a skull fracture of just a cranial wound, but he'd caught her.

He'd caught her.

Casting his briefcase into the back of the car, he drove cautiously to Meredith's house, the wipers on full and visibility poor. Whenever he stopped at lights or slowed at junctions he took a second to glance over at her, watching the way the rain dripped off her eyelids and the rainbow each drop threw as a passing car's headlights caught it for a fraction of a second, watching the way her hair dried slightly frizzy in an adorable way. He heard the slightest flutter of a snore, but that was all.

"Thanks," she mumbled, barely audibly, as he pulled into her drive.

"For what?" he said, putting the car in neutral.

"Catching me," she breathed, having barely enough energy to whisper.

"Of course I was going to catch you," he smiled. "You're all I need."

Meredith smiled too.

* * *

When Derek carried Meredith upstairs, he asked her to stay awake a little while longer, and she showed that she was by lightly stroking the hair at the back of his neck. He walked along the hall to the bathroom, where he sat Meredith on the closed toilet lid and switched on the shower before peeling off her wet clothes and grabbing a soft white towel from the cupboard.

Steam began to billow from the shower and Derek cradled Meredith close to him and stepped in, kneeling on the floor in his old jeans. Once she was nestled into a corner he threw off his own shirt and pants and washed his hair, then soaped Meredith's silky skin as she gazed almost vacantly up at him, smelling beautifully of strawberries. He didn't set the soap on the side until he was sure she'd warmed through, and then he shut off the water and stepped out and brought the towel around his shoulders before leaning over and once again lifting Meredith in his arms, using them to enclose her in the towel with him while he carried her to bed, dressed her in that ratty Dartmouth T-Shirt and tucked her under the covers, grabbing a shirt for himself on the way.

"Derek," she whispered as she shifted onto her left side in response to his weight coming onto the bed.

"Yeah?"

"I love you," she whispered.

Derek smiled. "I love you, too," he said, and kissed her right ear before curling around her, her body perfectly merging with his, melting into him like his companion puzzle piece, like they were a perfect fit, or some other kind of beautiful cliché.

He'd caught her.

And they were so happy and so peaceful and so very, very sleepy that he didn't wake once through the night.


End file.
